Photograph: courtesy of Thomas Beckerīecker, a former rock guitarist who teaches human rights law at Harvard, was startled by the ruthlessness of his fellow climbers. Thomas Becker, who teaches law at Harvard, describes queuing on Everest as ‘very Lord Of The Flies’. Behind them, tempers began to fray and climbers started swearing: “Fucking get moving!”, “Get the fuck off here!”, “What the fuck are you doing?” He spent several hours helping her, so that he could shuffle forward himself, patiently advising her where to put her feet and catching her when she slipped. He had never met her and didn’t know her name, but was worried by how inexperienced she seemed, unable to use her ice axe. At the worst part of the queue, he was stuck in a line of around 40 climbers, behind a woman who was struggling. He describes the experience as being “very Lord Of The Flies”. He is a lifelong climber, although it was his first attempt at Everest. That’s why everybody rushes for the top.”Ī year on, Thomas Becker tells me he remains disturbed by the behaviour he witnessed while queueing to reach the highest place on Earth. Not only that, but they have spent more than two months and a lot of effort to be ready. “You can only get a few words out at that altitude: ‘Move faster! Come off!’ I disagree with it, but people come to Everest carrying a huge financial burden. “When people are in stressful situations, they do shout,” Purja says. There was a dangerous clash between the typically alpha-plus personalities of people who want to summit Everest and their guides, who are dependent on their fees for survival. Elsewhere, local Nepalese guides were finding it harder to convince their clients that they needed to turn back. Purja’s experience and military background meant that climbers were happy to be guided by him. He worked out who had been waiting in critically cold conditions for the longest and prioritised them, and tried to calm the other climbers, taking off his mask to issue instructions. Rather than people fighting over who should go up first, it’s better if it is managed systematically,” he says. Purja paused at Hillary Step and tried to quell flaring tensions between climbers there were arguments about whether the people trying to get to the summit should be given priority over those trying to descend. Photograph: published with permission of Nirmal Purja Nirmal Purja at the summit of Everest in May 2019. Everyone is in that fine line between death and life.” There is no path, and people are in their own survival state at that altitude, struggling to put one foot in front of another. “If you have to drag a body through that, no one would be able to give up the path to them. Purja couldn’t be confident that other climbers would be helpful in an emergency. Every climber was clipped to a safety rope, and the path is too narrow to allow the more experienced climbers to unclip and pass the slower climbers. Looking at the line, with climbers travelling in both directions, Purja realised it would be impossible to rescue anyone who needed to be taken off the summit fast. It was literally the worst place on Earth to get stuck in a queue. As people queued, they got colder and used up unplanned-for quantities of their oxygen supplies. He knew things could go catastrophically wrong, and quickly this stretch of Everest, from the sheer rockface of the Hillary Step to the summit, was the most exposed part of the climb, with drops of up to 3,000 metres (9,842ft) on either side. Then he tried to assess how he could help. He took a picture of the queue at the top of Everest, which he later posted on Instagram, mainly as an explanation to his sponsors and supporters – a vivid image of the obstacle that had slowed him down. Summits can be a disappointment when you see that number of people taking selfies in such a spiritual place In normal circumstances, he would have been up Everest this year, but he is defusing the frustrations of lockdown by writing a book about climbing all 14 of the world’s highest mountains in just 189 days last year. I always try to stay calm on the mountain,” he tells me, speaking from his home in Winchester. Purja, a 36-year-old veteran of the Royal Navy’s elite Special Boat Service, has climbed Everest four times, and was philosophical.
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